Word.ws English Dictionary

picked up the tab

picked up the tab is the simple past and past participle of pick up the tab.

Meaning of pick up the tab

Verb

pick up the tab (third-person singular simple present picks up the tab, present participle picking up the tab, simple past and past participle picked up the tab)

  1. (US, idiomatic, intransitive) To accept a bill and pay it, especially at a bar or restaurant.
    • When the bill came to just 33,000 forints, I did something very out of character: I picked up the tab. It blew the budget for the day, but felt great.2014 January 30, Seth Kugel, “Wintertime Bargains in Budapest”, in The New York Times

Questions about picked up the tab

What is picked up the tab the simple past and past participle of?
Picked up the tab is the simple past and past participle of pick up the tab.

Words near picked up the tab in the dictionary

  1. picked up the mantle
  2. picked up the pace
  3. picked up the phone
  4. picked up the pieces
  5. picked up the slack
  6. picked up the tab
  7. picked up the threads
  8. picked up the threads of
  9. picked up what someone was laying down
  10. picked up what someone was putting down
  11. pickedevant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picked up the tab (page history and authors); pick up the tab (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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